Sephira, you just described perfectly my entire life!  Thank you for giving us such clarity.

I just noticed the Latin motto in your signature.  I had to use Google Translate, but I like it. 

There are, simply put, many ways to be. We are all here in this board, because we simply want to be; to be ourselves.

It makes no sense, having achieved a general way to be, now to impose a new requirement of how to be what we all simply are.

Quote from: Sephirah on June 26, 2018, 02:29:45 PM
Gender dysphoria can manifest at any age. It doesn't have to be pre-teen, teenage, early adult, or anything else.

As a lot of replies here have illustrated, a feeling doesn't automatically equate to knowing what that feeling is. Or knowing what causes it. So many things which we suffer from can have multiple, overlapping causes. Feeling like we don't fit in. Feeling like we're different to everyone around us. Feeling like we can't identify with our peer group... those are not solely identifiers of gender dysphoria. Feeling like you want to be someone else, feeling like you wish you had a different life, that things were different... that you identify more with how someone else is treated in life... those are not necessarily only identifiers of gender dysphoria, either.

And because of that, it's easy to write it off as something else. It's easy to look in another place. To think something else and never have the thought cross your mind until much later in life. When you don't know that other answers are a thing, you don't know where to look for them. It's all too easy to just go through life thinking you're just not doing it right because there's something wrong in your head, rather than entertaining the possibility that the life you're living may not be yours.

And it takes some people a lot of years to realise this. Sometimes people who have had to live for others for so long that they never get time to actually examine themselves. People who have put it down to something else and tried to ignore it, in the hopes it goes away. People for whom the scream of the world has been drowning out their own self-reflection to the point they just weren't able to listen to that whisper.

Knowledge and understanding of this condition is a relatively recent thing. For people born closer to the times we live in... it's out there. It's something you can research and accept as a possibility. For a lot of other, older people, it wasn't. Not at the time it could have made a difference to when they discovered who they were.

And then you have repressive households, or communities. Places where people growing up were just too scared to be anything other than what those around them expected them to be. Where ideologies and stereotypical ways of being were drilled into people from the time where they were old enough to understand speech. It happens. People can get brainwashed by folks who aren't in a crazy cult or an intelligence organisation. It happens. Day in and day out.

There are lots and lots of factors to shed light on why people come to terms with themselves at different times in their lives. I'm not sure it's the best way to look at it as "You had to know before you were 10 in order for it to be real." Perhaps a more healthy approach is to deal with it as we experience it in each individual case, and stop worrying so much about the supposed "blueprint".

I absolutely agree with everything you said here, this is my life to a capital T. In the words of a politician, I approve of this message lol..

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Quote from: FinallyMichelle on June 26, 2018, 12:05:06 AM
[emoji846] Late teens, early twenties is not so very old. I don't remember thinking as a child that I wanted to be a girl, my family obviously saw something but I didn't. About the only thing that I remember is that I didn't understand boys at all and they were not fun to be around. I knew that everyone thought that I was a sissy and that was bad but dysphoria, I don't think so. Not that I knew it as dysphoria at twelve but I knew then that I wanted to be a girl. In 1982 when I was 13 I told my grandparents that I couldn't be a boy anymore, was when I remember it locked in forever. Of course that didn't work out very well, but from then on I had to live with it. They tried to fix me with a mental institution, religion and everything else they could think of but nothing made it go away, just gave me a deep and abiding shame and hatred of myself. It took over 30 years to get past that and transition.

We all want solid answers, even I did and I knew all along. I knew that it wasn't ever going away though and when I learned that transition was possible I never looked back and never will. There were times in that 30 years that it wasn't as painful as others and I could push it aside but they didn't last long. Dysphoria is the key, whenever it happens to us in life, because it doesn't typically go away on its own. Spend a little time on this site and you will see post after post of people wishing they had started earlier or stuck with it if they had started earlier.

Dysphoria does not really have a set age or intensity. Mine was debilitating for most of my life but that is not standard, just what it was like for me. I have a friend that dysphoria didn't hit until she was in her 40s though she had thoughts of gender incongruity her whole life. She was also able to go for three years on hormones before going full time, I had to at around 6 months. I knew that it was too soon but I absolutely had to at that point.

Probably seeing a professional trained in GD would be the ideal next step for you. [emoji38] I can honestly say that I have no idea what men do or do not think but if I had to guess thinking that they want to be a girl is eexxttrreemmeellyy uncommon.

Age is not a defining characteristic of being transgender.

Wow, reading that statement, well was like a knock on the door for me, and then the realization finally hit me, I too really don't know how a man thinks either, and I shouldn't be expected to since I'm really a girl. It's time I start thinking like a woman 100% of the time and leave the man way of thinking to the men hehe. 

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Quote from: KathyLauren on June 25, 2018, 08:20:26 PM
Those kids who know what is "wrong" with them at such young ages are not typical.  It is much more common to become aware of those feelings around puberty, and even more common to not act on them until middle age.  Only then, in hindsight, do most people become aware of signs from their youth that suddenly make sense in the light of being trans.

I started feeling that I was "different" in my late teens.  I started thinking about how it would be to have a female body in my 30s, and didn't start transitioning until I was in my early 60s.  Only when I was actively investigating whether I was really trans (i.e. in my 60s) did I remember and suddenly understand some early clues from my childhood, going back to age 7.

Kathy. You and I have similar circumstances. Early recognition. Late action to find answers for why. Fear of the unknown was my biggest problem. In that I thought there were so few of us out there. And the ones that came out were smited. Even someone like Christine Cosey. I wanted to come out in the eighty's but there were no gender therapists. And I didn't want to discuss a mental health problem. So I tried to hide in plain sight. Luckily my second and present wife has not made it an issue. Unforfunately it did destroy my first marriage.

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Quote from: Very Confused Need Help on June 25, 2018, 04:53:04 PM
At 24 now, these feelings started either late teens or early twenties for me. I mentioned them in a previous thread but this aspect was so notable it needed focus. When I hear others, via YouTube and TV interviews, about how it started when they were like age 3, 4, 5, I wonder of I really have gender dysphoria. Trying to rule out any other options. Is there any reason why "a man would suddenly start want to be a woman" for ANY other reason than gender dysphoria ? I don't even know how to ask. I'm not looking at alternatives to convince myself I'm not trans. That's not it. I'm truly confused.

Riddle me this: Why does it matter when someone else's dysphoria started? We're talking about yours. 

Hugs, Devlyn

Quote from: Lady Skylar on June 26, 2018, 04:51:08 PM
Wow, reading that statement, well was like a knock on the door for me, and then the realization finally hit me, I too really don't know how a man thinks either, and I shouldn't be expected to since I'm really a girl. It's time I start thinking like a woman 100% of the time and leave the man way of thinking to the men hehe. 

This may sound corny and stupid but that is transition. The fact that there are not a hundred or thousand responses to every thread is because so many of us have finally accepted that fact and are at peace. We have moved on to the life that has always been waiting. Everyone here is walking a road that so many of us have walked before. I wish that they were all here to tell you, it will end. One day we walk out of our front door as a girl, or for the gents, as a boy and it just is. There are no more questions, is no more anxiety and life is waiting. I understand why almost all move on, very little is relevant anymore. We are not transitioning, we have transitioned and our focus is on other things. Transition is a physical thing, but it is even more an internal thing and when that is done one day everyone who has posted today or this week or month will move on as well.

Till then, this an amazing place of support. 🙂

I knew about mine since 7 and  I came out at 19 then 26. If you get anything out of it you will find out who you really are.Do not be afraid to ask questions it's apart of finding your self.

I first had feelings pretty young but had no words for them and I just assumed most boys felt jealous of girls and wishes they could enjoy things they had.

In my early teen years I got internet access and got a little more exposed to the ideas and started playing with my gender and sexuality a bit, specifically about grade 9, when I got out of Catholic school.

My trouble came when I somehow ran afoul of some boys who didn't like my explorations. I got beaten into a coma and spent 3 days out. Afterwards I felt so embarassed, hurt and scared I quit school (Tested out of HS, you could do that back then) and went to work in wrestling, where I could hypermasculanate. After that ended, I absorbed myself with college and work.

I didn't really shake myself out of that until a few years ago. I'm still very paralyzed and every step is raught and slow. I don't know if I can ever really transition. But I have to try.

Quote from: Sephirah on June 26, 2018, 02:29:45 PM
Gender dysphoria can manifest at any age. It doesn't have to be pre-teen, teenage, early adult, or anything else.

As a lot of replies here have illustrated, a feeling doesn't automatically equate to knowing what that feeling is. Or knowing what causes it. So many things which we suffer from can have multiple, overlapping causes. Feeling like we don't fit in. Feeling like we're different to everyone around us. Feeling like we can't identify with our peer group... those are not solely identifiers of gender dysphoria. Feeling like you want to be someone else, feeling like you wish you had a different life, that things were different... that you identify more with how someone else is treated in life... those are not necessarily only identifiers of gender dysphoria, either.

And because of that, it's easy to write it off as something else. It's easy to look in another place. To think something else and never have the thought cross your mind until much later in life. When you don't know that other answers are a thing, you don't know where to look for them. It's all too easy to just go through life thinking you're just not doing it right because there's something wrong in your head, rather than entertaining the possibility that the life you're living may not be yours.

And it takes some people a lot of years to realise this. Sometimes people who have had to live for others for so long that they never get time to actually examine themselves. People who have put it down to something else and tried to ignore it, in the hopes it goes away. People for whom the scream of the world has been drowning out their own self-reflection to the point they just weren't able to listen to that whisper.

Knowledge and understanding of this condition is a relatively recent thing. For people born closer to the times we live in... it's out there. It's something you can research and accept as a possibility. For a lot of other, older people, it wasn't. Not at the time it could have made a difference to when they discovered who they were.

And then you have repressive households, or communities. Places where people growing up were just too scared to be anything other than what those around them expected them to be. Where ideologies and stereotypical ways of being were drilled into people from the time where they were old enough to understand speech. It happens. People can get brainwashed by folks who aren't in a crazy cult or an intelligence organisation. It happens. Day in and day out.

There are lots and lots of factors to shed light on why people come to terms with themselves at different times in their lives. I'm not sure it's the best way to look at it as "You had to know before you were 10 in order for it to be real." Perhaps a more healthy approach is to deal with it as we experience it in each individual case, and stop worrying so much about the supposed "blueprint".

Hello Sephirah

I have been reading your posts for a year although I only joined Susans as a member in January as I was starting HRT in February.

I find your posts most accurate, well constructed, interesting and enlightening. This post provides the perfect summary to the question at hand.

I am one of the many who did know at 4, bodyshaved and crossdressed all my life, incorrectly assumed I was ->-bleeped-<- instead of transgender for years and only took action at 62 - therapy then HRT.

Some of us know at 4, some at puberty (very painful for me also), some in their 20s or any time up to their 80s. Some finally discover at a particular age and for reasons you state, bury or suppress. Some finally accept and then realise with hindsight the earlier signs.

We all so different in the transgender world. There is no specific or approximate age to discover or accept you are transgender.

Thank you for this and for all your posts.

Hugs

Pamela

Quote from: Jessica on June 25, 2018, 05:03:28 PM
I myself knew something was afoot when I was in my teens, but with no avenue for anything to create that into a reality, I sucked it up and continued my life the best I could.  Only after the change in my healthcare options that I pursued my dream....at 61

Hugs and smiles, Jessica

Similar for me.  Early puberty I started having fantasies of being a woman, but there was no where to go with it.  It wasn't until realized that maybe there is hope for me by seeing some accounts of others and before/after pictures of people similar to me that I thought maybe there is a path for me.  While I wanted to be a woman, I did a really good job of repressing the dysphoria but at 41 I just couldn't push it down anymore.

         Julie

I subscribe to the theory that everyone is born with a subconscious knowledge of their sex.  If that neurological or 'brain sex' aligns well with your physiological sex, you won't experience gender dysphoria.  One's subconscious sexual identity (I'm not talking sexuality here) can lie dormant for years.  I think my gender dysphoria existed from an early age, but I didn't recognize it, and rationalized its effects to other causes.   Eventually, however, it broke through to the conscious level. 

There are many factors which accelerate or impede this change.  For much of my life the vocabulary and understanding of gender identity didn't even exist outside a tiny sliver of the medical establishment.  Social gender conditioning and enforcement overwhelmed and inhibited entertaining ideas of cross gender identity.  Even when I became consciously aware of my sexual identity and attributed the psychological distress I was experiencing to it, I continued to deny its importance and suppress its influence, but with no lasting effect.  At each stage of my life the effects of GD became more intense.  Coping mechanisms broke down and were replaced by still more effective means to evade the life threatening consequences of accepting the truth of who I really was. 

So in my view, gender dysphoria is not something that strikes you like a cancer.  The seeds of GD were planted before I was born.  It was just a matter of time for it to grow, and make its presence known, and for me to finally accept it.

I've been in the trans community online and in person for almost...what 6 years now? All I can say for sure is that this is the land of no laws. People realize they're trans at any stage in life (Ive seen people realize it at like 60). Sometimes its denial, sometimes its just the nature of someone's gender fluidity. There's lots of reasons, but the key is to just kinda roll with things and take them as they are. Just do what you have to do. Your feelings are valid no matter what and your life is your own.